Ports fail to attract biz during April-August; traffic up 0.6%

Composite traffic at 12 major ports rose by a meager 0.62% during April-August 2010 as Ennore Port and New Mangalore Port failed miserably in attracting business. The two ports registered a steep fall in traffic at 20% and 14%, respectively in these five months as compared to the year-ago period. Some other ports also clocked a negative growth but it not steeper than -4%.

Among those clocking positive growth, the best performance was of Chochin Port with an 18% expansion in traffic. It was followed by Mormugao Port with 6.38% growth, the data compiled by Indian Ports Association (IPA) show.

Iron ore, which forms a significant part of export traffic, played a key role in the negative growth at some ports after Karnataka government imposed a ban on export of the mineral from state ports. The ban was imposed in July this year to restrict illegal mining of the ore. Iron ore traffic was hit the most with a decline of 51%.

While Mumbai Port Trust and Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust?operators of Mumbai Port and Jawaharlal Nehru Port respectively?did not handle any iron ore traffic during the period, Murmugao Port and Tuticorin Port registered a positive performance on the mineral.

?The traffic started falling at New Mangalore Port much before the export ban as Karnataka had restricted the transport of the ore inside the state a long time back. This led to the overall fall in traffic at the port as iron ore contributes most to the total traffic after petroleum, oil and lubricant (POL) sector,? IPA managing director A Janardhana Rao told FE.

Iron ore had a 14% share in total cargo at New Mangalore Port after POL, which accounted for 64%. The contribution of other individual cargo to the total traffic at the port was less than 10% each.

Ennore Port handled limited quantities of only three commodities?POL, iron ore and thermal coal. ?Ennore’s performance was marred by lack of adequate capacity to handle goods. The major capacity constraint is on coal handling,? Rao said. According to government data Ennore has a total capacity of 16 million tonnes (MT) per annum, of which 13 MT is for coal. Only Kolkata Port has a lower capacity than Ennore Port’s.